The End

The last session was over and our little class of seventeen or so had decided to check out the edge of the desert, which was apparently not too far away from the town centre. We piled into three cars and we drove. We passed many an orange tree, some sad houses and a water park that was closed for the season. The rest was brown, green scrubland.

We pulled up to a large mound of sand that we couldn’t see over, this must be the edge we thought. It was warm and comforting in the sun and sand sifted quickly into our shoes as we ran up the dune. We looked out over the undulating expanse of sand and we’re quiet.

“Its not really the desert, is it?” said Liz.

Suddenly we were all laughing and running around like little children. Jumping up and down, whooping. For some reason we couldn’t stop stomping on these little wild watermelons growing everywhere on the ground. Such pleasure was ours when we heard the crunch and squelch of the little fruits bursting under foot.

Atop a high dune some of us lit cigarettes and were quiet again. While it wasn’t the desert, it was beautiful. Yellow-orange sand, shaped by the wind into gullies and hills ballooned out before us, only to be cordoned off by green trees all around. It was like an inlet or a bay.

We stayed there, all together, for a couple of hours. We wound down. We knew it was all ending soon, our togetherness. We passed around something that wasn't a cigarette and reminisced on the festival we had shared.

On the car ride back to town we were once more like little children, tired and quiet from our outing. I stared at the changing sky the whole way home. It was magnificent, watching it change.  Like the slowest water-colour painting you have ever seen. The top of the page was the lightest blue and extended for a long distance. Once near the bottom the sprinkles of light pink and gold were introduced, followed by weak red, maroon, lilac, purple and countless other colours I can’t capture. The point where the sun dropped below the horizon was pure paint with hardly any water. It was searing and vivid.

Take Comfort Where You Can

A woman from the audience was asking Anthony Lawrence and Eileen Chong a question. It seemed she was about to burst into tears with every croaky word she spoke. I had heard her in the last session too. She went on and on about herself and I was beginning to get exasperated. I looked around to see the reaction of everyone else in the room. My eyes alighted on Sharon Olds.

In contrast to everyone else, she had a look of concern and interest on her face as she stared at the grey, teary woman. I realised that Sharon was a woman of supreme kindness and empathy. I realised that when Sharon said she only knew how to write about real life, she was telling the truth. Her poems are all tinged with kindness and I haven’t read one that is hateful or bitter. Even when she writes about her ex husband she infers warmth and love. I feel like divorced couples are capable of incomparable hate and vehement yet she shows none of this. And I do not believe she hides it either.

Strangely, this made me worry and I felt uneasy. I wasn't brimming with good thoughts and empathy. I was rolling my eyes at this brave woman. How was I going to sell any books with my narcissistic attitude and scathing manner? 

I let myself fret for about 2 minutes before I remembered all the weird and sadistic books I had read that weren't all about love and daisy chains. The book Lolita by Vladamir Nabokov is literally about a paedophile obsessed with nymphets and its considered one of the greats. Its about how you write not what you write. Oh Lewis, you have outdone yourself.

My mind came back to where I was, question time was over and everyone was leaving. I picked up my things and left with my classmates. As soon as we were free of the throng of people, one of my classmates said “Can you believe that woman?”

I smiled.

Songs Like Little Flowers

They were talking about poetry now. Even though I don’t write or read poetry I was excited. The idea of it is so romantic and lovely. Writing in a condensed form, which more often than not implies and hints at, rather than serving it all up on a china plate.

Much the same as everyone else, I fell in love with Sharon Olds straight away. She wore her hair in two long, thick strands down either side of her kind face. She had these big antique classes on, that all the Granny’s seem to wear, even now, in this modern era. How do they keep finding them? Why aren’t there new old people things?

She seemed special and I hung off her every word. She wasn’t putting on a show, or trying to be funny, she was just being her. Her poems washed over me like warm rose water. I closed my eyes and submerged fully. A smile spread across my sanguine face. ‘I like to make songs that look like little flowers’ she said. I liked that.

In the beginning, I didn’t like Peter Goldsworthy, he looked like a stuck up doctor and it seemed for every lovely thing Sharon said, he had something mechanical to retort with. He was smothering her with technicalities.

It turns out I was being over protective. Peter actually is a doctor and an accomplished writer- and he’s not that stuck up. I liked his sense of humour and his brave brashness. He made crass jokes about Methodists and fucking and cheekily told Sharon that her next husband might be a doctor too.

It was a fantastic session, by two wonderfully talented humans. I eagerly lined up to buy my first book of poetry ever and I got it signed by Olds.

Topical Rumination

A question, toward the end of Alexis Wright's conversation with Sheridan Stuart of the ABC, irked me a little, but I wonder to myself whether it was sociably acceptable of me, to be irked.

I would like to say that it is not my aim to take a dig at Sheridan here, I am simply exploring how a certain question made me feel and hopefully getting some feedback.

 So, Stuart said to Wright (paraphrasing here) ‘you are such a strong and political woman yourself Alexis, so I was surprised when you picked a male to be the first Indigenous Prime Minister of Australia’. Alexis looked a little bewildered at this statement/question and said ‘well, it could have been a woman too’.

To me, this statement seems ill placed and beside the point, inconsequential. The question of equality and women’s rights is something I am very much in favour of - I believe it to be of paramount importance. Yet in this instance I didn’t think it served a purpose, this asking of why Alexis chose an indigenous male PM, in her fictional book, over a female one. If the statement was turned on its head and Stuart showed surprise that Wright chose a female over a male, it would be, in my mind, a sexist and controversial statement.

Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill here, as they say, and I look like the white middle aged man complaining about racism. Maybe Sheridan was trying to spark a conversation about equality here and get people thinking about the subject. I am not sure, but the statement on its own seemed out of place.

If anything, I think this illustrates the rocky terrain in which we all tread when we talk about gender. 

Alexis Wright and Black Swans

Liz Lane and I step off the street and into Stefano's brewery, we are unsure of where we belong and what to expect here. We stand in the doorway for a time. I spy the rest of our rag tag class sitting together on a table. At this point, none of us really know each other and we are all a little stand off-ish. There are some nods and smiles while we sit down.

We are seated toward the back, behind white haired beings that are far richer in age than us. I take them all in. Some have lots of hair, even more than I, while others have only strange wispy tufts. Some of them are beautiful and others are ugly. An elegant, ageing woman catches me looking around and she smiles at me, I smile back and we share a moment. Our heads swivel to the space in between the crowd and the gleaming steel brewery. There is a little stage and a little woman. Alexis Wright.

I get a warm feeling seeing her, I make a mental note in my head to read one of her books. Her speech is broken and at times difficult to listen to, but I learn that she was a mother at only fifteen, a young hot head, and that most of her classmates didn’t think she would amount to much. Didn’t she show them?

The more she spoke the more I liked her. She let the room know she didn’t learn much at school, but that that was probably a good thing because they weren’t teaching the right things anyway. When Alexis spoke about why she wrote The Swan Book (Winner of the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal) she said simply ‘I could either think about John Howard or black swans’. Everyone shared a laugh at this.

When it was over Liz and slipped out for another cigarette.

There is something I wish to speak about further from this interview with Alexis Wright but it belongs else where, so keep a look out for my next post.

The Way to Mildura

We set off late in the evening, Phoebe, Will and I, which meant we were ham sandwiched between cars 'til way up the Calder hwy. A happy calm settled over me as I nestled into the backseat, I was looking forward to the next six hours of just sitting. In soft tones Phoebe let us know that she wanted a cigarette. Will made some comic remark about us smoking but then smoked with us anyway. That is the way he is, he likes to make people laugh.

The air was too cold coming in the window but I let it run all over my face anyway, carving caves and inlets. I inhaled and wistfully, loudly, exhaled. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, I was just looking out the window and smoking my cigarette. Will was talking and awful lot, he had one of those minds where he could just talk and talk and talk. I felt bad about not giving much back in the way of conversation but I was content with my own thoughts and the quiet.

The hours wore on; the road was infinite. We were more secluded now; the only other things were the blinding high beams of other cars and the stars, which became more confident the further we drove.
 -Have you written a blog before Phoebe? I said.
 -Yea I had to write one for another class.
-Oh.

It was nearing midnight when we finally reached Mildura. Then, it was one long stretch of road with a couple of tyre shops strewn carelessly around. There seemed to be aeons of space between everything. We made it to Brian’s house and the lovers bid me farewell for the night.

Brian had kindly offered the La Trobe students a free room in his house for the duration of the festival. I had gladly, if somewhat tardily, taken him up on this offer. He was a taught, short man and he smacked his lips a lot. He invited me in and began offering me all sorts of advice and information on the festival. I think his main aim was to size me up. Fair enough, I had just walked in out of the night. I believe I failed his test of character but I wasn’t to know this then. I collapsed in my tiny bed and was asleep.